Concept Article - The Glory of the Lord

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THE GLORY OF THE LORD

by the Rev. Kurt Horigan Asplundh

What do you think was the most important work that the Lord Jesus Christ did while he was in the world? His miracles - feeding thousands with a little bread, healing incurable diseases, actually bringing men back to life again after they had died? Perhaps you would say that the most important thing He did was teaching truth to His disciples and so starting a new church on earth that we call the "Christian Church." Another thing that He did was more subtle and hidden from human eyes. While on earth, the Lord was fighting against the spirits of hell and conquering them so that people were protected from their evil power. If He had not conquered these spirits, they would have destroyed us all.

Yet, wonderful as the Lord's miracles were, and His teachings, and His victory over the powers of evil, there is something He did that is still more wonderful and important. This is the Lord's Glorification. We are familiar with the word glory. Sometimes we use it to describe something that has been made very beautiful - a sunrise, for example, we may call a "glorious sight." The sunrise is beautiful, or glorious, because the light of the sun has made the sky, the clouds, and the landscape, bright and colorful. We also use the word glory to describe times when our life has been made especially bright and happy, such as when our team wins a victory and "gains glory." The glory here is the honor and admiration won by doing some thing important and valuable. And, just as there would be no glory in the sunrise apart from the light of the sun which gives glory to the sky, so there would be no glory in our lives apart from the knowledge and strength that we receive from the Lord to do important and valuable work.

The word glorification means to "make something have glory." It means the getting of glory. Now what does this have to do with the Lord? Why is the Glorification the most important accomplishment of the Lord's life on earth?

To answer this, we must know what the Lord glorified. What did He make more beautiful? What did He do that would bring great honor and admiration? We are taught in the New Church that the Lord glorified His Human. There is a connection between the Lord's birth and His rising from the sepulcher. The work that the Lord began at His birth into the world, at Christmas time, was completed thirty-three years later when He rose from the tomb at Easter.

Easter Sunday became remarkable when the women came to the tomb and looked for the Lord's dead body. It was not there! He had risen from the tomb with His body. It was not in the grave where they expected to find it, where any other person's body would have remained until it gradually turned to dust.

At His birth, the Lord came into the world in a body. This body was from Mary, his mother, just like our bodies are from our mothers. The Lord was born so that He could be in this world, just as we are in the world. During the years the Lord lived on the earth in the body from Mary, He grew up and grew wise. He learned the truths in the Word. And, as the Lord learned from the Word, He built up something in Himself that was more important than His body. It was His mind. The Heavenly Doctrine for the New Church teaches us this by saying that while the Lord was in the world He "put on a Human."

This may sound confusing. The Lord was a human being when He was born. We all are. But remember, if we never learn anything, we remain more ignorant than animals. To become a real human being, we must acquire knowledges and the ability to think and recognize the truth. As we do this, we can be said to be putting on a "human form." Our minds are becoming human minds, superior to animal minds. The Human of the Lord, or the Human form that the Lord took on while on earth, was infinitely superior to the human qualities that we can build up. He learned all the truth there is to know, and learned it perfectly. We can learn only a little.

So, the Human of the Lord was not the body He had from Mary, but all the truth He was able to learn by means of His earthly body. And this is what the Lord glorified, what is meant by the "glorification of the human." During the whole of the Lord's life, He made that truth glorious. He made it to be such that we can admire and honor it, and give it glory.

The glory of a sunrise is from the light of the sun. The glory of the Lord's Human is from the Divine life that is in Him. Deep within the Lord's soul is the Infinite love that is the origin of all life. The Glorification was making the Human of the Lord perfect and Divine in itself, by adding or joining the love that He had with the truth of His Human.

This is the most important work that the Lord ever did. He made His Human to be Divine. The Lord Jesus Christ, on earth, was joined with, and became one with, and now is, the God of heaven and earth.

On Easter, when He rose from the tomb, this work was finished. The Lord was perfected and glorified. Nothing remained of the body that He had from Mary. It could not be found in the tomb. But the glorified body, the Divine Human, as it is called in the Heavenly Doctrine, had risen from the tomb. So it is that Mary and the disciples saw the Lord alive. So it is that the Lord now has "all power in heaven and on earth" to do miracles, to teach truths, and to keep all evil under His control, forever.

In the New Church we worship the Lord in His Glorified Human. We know Him and can love Him even more perfectly than His disciples did. He, and He alone, is God almighty, because He put on a Human in the world and glorified it.

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